ART IN SCHOOLS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21418, 9 March 1935, Page 17

ART IN SCHOOLS

'Hie Teaching of Art in SfliooK 3>y Kvnlyn Gibbs. -Williams and NorRate. (12/6 net.) Miss Evelyn Gibbs, who is well known both as an arlisf: and ay a teacher of art, in this book advocates certain developments in art teaching which, although they have been largely adopted in London, Scandinavia, and some of the countries of Eastern Europe, are only slowly making their way in England and its colonies. These developments are based on the belief that in every child there is a faculty of imagination and a definite creative impulse. If the faculty of imagination is rightly handled, the creative impulse will enable the child to produce something which, to the child, is beautiful, striking, or satisfying, and which is therefore true art.

The old method of teaching made no appeal to the imagination. Moreover, by its insistence on the necessity of teaching children to draw cubes, geometrical shapes, and other formal objects, it stifled the creative impulse. The method of art teaching which Miss Gibbs so ably sets forth in this book appeals to the imagination and encourages the creative impulse in such a way that the child leaves school with his imagination quickened, his sense of colour, line and pattern developed, and his artistic sensibility awakened to all things in his world that are beautiful.

In support of her thesis Miss Gibbs records the results, in the shape of imaginative painting and craft work, which have been admired by the senior girls in two small elementary schools in a period of three years. The work of these children is admirably illustrated in black and white, and in colour, and is astonishing in its imaginative power. This admirable book is full of interest to the art teacher, the psychologist, and to education authorities, while its naive and spontaneous illustrations are full of charm for everyone